Daddy Long-Legs

Sallie is running for class president, and unless all signs fail, she is going to be elected. Such an atmosphere of intrigue—you should see what politicians we are! Oh, I tell you, Daddy, when we women get our rights, you men will have to look alive in order to keep yours. Election comes next Saturday, and we ’re going to have a torchlight procession in the evening, no matter who wins.

I am beginning chemistry, a most unusual study. I ’ve never seen anything like it before. Molecules and Atoms are the material employed, but I ’ll be in a position to discuss them more definitely next month.

I am also taking argumentation and logic.

Also history of the whole world.

Also plays of William Shakespeare.

Also French.

If this keeps up many years longer, I shall become quite intelligent.

I should rather have elected economics than French, but I did n’t dare, because I was afraid that unless I reëlected French, the Professor would not let me pass—as it was, I just managed to squeeze through the June examination. But I will say that my high-school preparation was not very adequate.

There ’s one girl in the class who chatters away in French as fast as she does in English. She went abroad with her parents when she was a child, and spent three years in a convent school. You can imagine how bright she is compared with the rest of us—irregular verbs are mere playthings. I wish my parents had chucked me into a French convent when I was little instead of a foundling asylum. Oh, no, I don’t either! Because then maybe I should never have known you. I ’d rather know you than French.

Good-by, Daddy. I must call on Harriet Martin now, and, having discussed the chemical situation, casually drop a few thoughts on the subject of our next president.

Yours in politics,J. Abbott.
October 17th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Supposing the swimming tank in the gymnasium were filled full of lemon jelly, could a person trying to swim manage to keep on top or would he sink?

We were having lemon jelly for dessert when the question came up. We discussed it heatedly for half an hour and it ’s still unsettled. Sallie thinks that she could swim in it, but I am perfectly sure that the best swimmer in the world would sink. Would n’t it be funny to be drowned in lemon jelly?

Two other problems are engaging the attention of our table.

1st. What shape are the rooms in an octagon house? Some of the girls insist that they ’re square; but I think they ’d have to be shaped like a piece of pie. Don’t you?

2d. Suppose there were a great big hollow sphere made of looking-glass and you were sitting inside. Where would it stop reflecting your face and begin reflecting your back? The more one thinks about this problem, the more puzzling it becomes. You can see with what deep philosophical reflection we engage our leisure!

Did I ever tell you about the election? It happened three weeks ago, but so fast do we live, that three weeks is ancient history. Sallie was elected, and we had a torchlight parade with transparencies saying, “McBride Forever,” and a band consisting of fourteen pieces (three mouth organs and eleven combs).

We ’re very important persons now in “258.” Julia and I come in for a great deal of reflected glory. It ’s quite a social strain to be living in the same house with a president.

Bonne nuit, cher Daddy.Acceptez mes compliments,Très respectueux.Je suis, Votre Judy.November 12th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

We beat the Freshmen at basket ball yesterday. Of course we ’re pleased—but oh, if we could only beat the Juniors! I ’d be willing to be black and blue all over and stay in bed a week in a witch-hazel compress.

Sallie has invited me to spend the Christmas vacation with her. She lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. Was n’t it nice of her? I shall love to go. I ’ve never been in a private family in my life, except at Lock Willow, and the Semples were grown-up and old and don’t count. But the McBrides have a houseful of children (anyway two or three) and a mother and father and grandmother, and an Angora cat. It ’s a perfectly complete family! Packing your trunk and going away is more fun than staying behind. I am terribly excited at the prospect.

Seventh hour—I must run to rehearsal. I ’m to be in the Thanksgiving theatricals. A prince in a tower with a velvet tunic and yellow curls. Is n’t that a lark?

Yours,J. A.
Saturday.

Do you want to know what I look like? Here ’s a photograph of all three that Leonora Fenton took.

The light one who is laughing is Sallie, and the tall one with her nose in the air is Julia, and the little one with the hair blowing across her face is Judy—she is really more beautiful than that, but the sun was in her eyes.

“Stone Gate,”Worcester, Mass.,December 31st.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I meant to write to you before and thank you for your Christmas check, but life in the McBride household is very absorbing, and I don’t seem able to find two consecutive minutes to spend at a desk.

I bought a new gown—one that I did n’t need, but just wanted. My Christmas present this year is from Daddy-Long-Legs; my family just sent love.

I ’ve been having the most beautiful vacation visiting Sallie. She lives in a big old-fashioned brick house with white trimmings set back from the street—exactly the kind of house that I used to look at so curiously when I was in the John Grier Home, and wonder what it could be like inside. I never expected to see with my own eyes—but here I am! Everything is so comfortable and restful and homelike; I walk from room to room and drink in the furnishings.

It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in; with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fireplaces for pop-corn, and an attic to romp in on rainy days, and slippery banisters with a comfortable flat knob at the bottom, and a great big sunny kitchen, and a nice fat, sunny cook who has lived in the family thirteen years and always saves out a piece of dough for the children to bake. Just the sight of such a house makes you want to be a child all over again.

And as for families! I never dreamed they could be so nice. Sallie has a father and mother and grandmother, and the sweetest three-year-old baby sister all over curls, and a medium-sized brother who always forgets to wipe his feet, and a big, good-looking brother named Jimmie, who is a junior at Princeton.

We have the jolliest times at the table—everybody laughs and jokes and talks at once, and we don’t have to say grace beforehand. It ’s a relief not having to thank Somebody for every mouthful you eat. (I dare say I ’m blasphemous; but you ’d be, too, if you ’d offered as much obligatory thanks as I have.)

Such a lot of things we ’ve done—I can’t begin to tell you about them. Mr. McBride owns a factory, and Christmas eve he had a tree for the employees’ children. It was in the long packing-room which was decorated with evergreens and holly. Jimmie McBride was dressed as Santa Claus, and Sallie and I helped him distribute the presents.

Dear me, Daddy, but it was a funny sensation! I felt as benevolent as a Trustee of the John Grier Home. I kissed one sweet, sticky little boy—but I don’t think I patted any of them on the head!

And two days after Christmas, they gave a dance at their own house for ME.

It was the first really true ball I ever attended—college does n’t count where we dance with girls. I had a new white evening gown (your Christmas present—many thanks) and long white gloves and white satin slippers. The only drawback to my perfect, utter, absolute happiness was the fact that Mrs. Lippett could n’t see me leading the cotillion with Jimmie McBride. Tell her about it, please, the next time you visit the J. G. H.

Yours ever,Judy Abbott.

P. S. Would you be terribly displeased, Daddy, if I did n’t turn out to be a Great Author after all, but just a Plain Girl?

6.30, Saturday.

Dear Daddy,

We started to walk to town to-day, but mercy! how it poured. I like winter to be winter with snow instead of rain.

Julia’s desirable uncle called again this afternoon—and brought a five-pound box of chocolates. There are advantages you see about rooming with Julia.

Our innocent prattle appeared to amuse him and he waited over a train in order to take tea in the study. And an awful lot of trouble we had getting permission. It ’s hard enough entertaining fathers and grandfathers, but uncles are a step worse; and as for brothers and cousins, they are next to impossible. Julia had to swear that he was her uncle before a notary public and then have the county clerk’s certificate attached. (Don’t I know a lot of law?) And even then I doubt if we could have had our tea if the Dean had chanced to see how youngish and good-looking Uncle Jervis is.

Anyway, we had it, with brown bread Swiss cheese sandwiches. He helped make them and then ate four. I told him that I had spent last summer at Lock Willow, and we had a beautiful gossipy time about the Semples, and the horses and cows and chickens. All the horses that he used to know are dead, except Grover, who was a baby colt at the time of his last visit—and poor Grove now is so old he can just limp about the pasture.

He asked if they still kept doughnuts in a yellow crock with a blue plate over it on the bottom shelf of the pantry—and they do! He wanted to know if there was still a woodchuck’s hole under the pile of rocks in the night pasture—and there is! Amasai caught a big, fat, gray one there this summer, the twenty-fifth great-grandson of the one Master Jervie caught when he was a little boy.

I called him “Master Jervie” to his face, but he did n’t appear to be insulted. Julia says that she has never seen him so amiable; he ’s usually pretty unapproachable. But Julia has n’t a bit of tact; and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right way and spit if you don’t. (That is n’t a very elegant metaphor. I mean it figuratively.)

We ’re reading Marie Bashkirtseff’s journal. Is n’t it amazing? Listen to this: “Last night I was seized by a fit of despair that found utterance in moans, and that finally drove me to throw the dining-room clock into the sea.”

It makes me almost hope I ’m not a genius; they must be very wearing to have about—and awfully destructive to the furniture.

Mercy! how it keeps pouring. We shall have to swim to chapel to-night.Yours ever,Judy.
Jan. 20th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Did you ever have a sweet baby girl who was stolen from the cradle in infancy?

Maybe I am she! If we were in a novel, that would be the dénouement, would n’t it?

It ’s really awfully queer not to know what one is—sort of exciting and romantic. There are such a lot of possibilities. Maybe I ’m not American; lots of people are n’t. I may be straight descended from the ancient Romans, or I may be a Viking’s daughter, or I may be the child of a Russian exile and belong by rights in a Siberian prison, or maybe I ’m a Gipsy—I think perhaps I am. I have a very wandering spirit, though I have n’t as yet had much chance to develop it.

Do you know about that one scandalous blot in my career—the time I ran away from the asylum because they punished me for stealing cookies? It ’s down in the books free for any Trustee to read. But really, Daddy, what could you expect? When you put a hungry little nine-year girl in the pantry scouring knives, with the cookie jar at her elbow, and go off and leave her alone; and then suddenly pop in again, would n’t you expect to find her a bit crumby? And then when you jerk her by the elbow and box her ears, and make her leave the table when the pudding comes, and tell all the other children that it ’s because she ’s a thief, would n’t you expect her to run away?

I only ran four miles. They caught me and brought me back; and every day for a week I was tied, like a naughty puppy, to a stake in the back yard while the other children were out at recess.

Oh, dear! There ’s the chapel bell, and after chapel I have a committee meeting. I ’m sorry because I meant to write you a very entertaining letter this time.

Auf wiedersehen Cher DaddyPax tibi!Judy.

P. S. There ’s one thing I ’m perfectly sure of. I ’m not a Chinaman.

February 4th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Jimmie McBride has sent me a Princeton banner as big as one end of the room; I am very grateful to him for remembering me, but I don’t know what on earth to do with it. Sallie and Julia won’t let me hang it up; our room this year is furnished in red, and you can imagine what an effect we ’d have if I added orange and black. But it ’s such nice, warm, thick felt, I hate to waste it. Would it be very improper to have it made into a bath robe? My old one shrank when it was washed.

I ’ve entirely omitted of late telling you what I am learning, but though you might not imagine it from my letters, my time is exclusively occupied with study. It ’s a very bewildering matter to get educated in five branches at once.

“The test of true scholarship,” says Chemistry Professor, “is a painstaking passion for detail.”

“Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail,” says History Professor. “Stand far enough away to get a perspective on the whole.”

You can see with what nicety we have to trim our sails between chemistry and history. I like the historical method best. If I say that William the Conqueror came over in 1492, and Columbus discovered America in 1100 or 1066 or whenever it was, that ’s a mere detail that the Professor overlooks. It gives a feeling of security and restfulness to the history recitation, that is entirely lacking in chemistry.

Sixth-hour bell—I must go to the laboratory and look into a little matter of acids and salts and alkalis. I ’ve burned a hole as big as a plate in the front of my chemistry apron, with hydrochloric acid. If the theory worked, I ought to be able to neutralize that hole with good strong ammonia, ought n’t I?

Examinations next week, but who ’s afraid?

Yours ever,Judy.
March 5th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

There is a March wind blowing, and the sky is filled with heavy, black moving clouds. The crows in the pine trees are making such a clamor! It ’s an intoxicating, exhilarating, calling noise. You want to close your books and be off over the hills to race with the wind.

We had a paper chase last Saturday over five miles of squashy ’cross country. The fox (composed of three girls and a bushel or so of confetti) started half an hour before the twenty-seven hunters. I was one of the twenty-seven; eight dropped by the wayside; we ended nineteen. The trail led over a hill, through a cornfield, and into a swamp where we had to leap lightly from hummock to hummock. Of course half of us went in ankle deep. We kept losing the trail, and wasted twenty-five minutes over that swamp. Then up a hill through some woods and in at a barn window! The barn doors were all locked and the window was up high and pretty small. I don’t call that fair, do you?

But we did n’t go through; we circumnavigated the barn and picked up the trail where it issued by way of a low shed roof onto the top of a fence. The fox thought he had us there, but we fooled him. Then straight away over two miles of rolling meadow, and awfully hard to follow, for the confetti was getting sparse. The rule is that it must be at the most six feet apart, but they were the longest six feet I ever saw. Finally, after two hours of steady trotting, we tracked Monsieur Fox into the kitchen of Crystal Spring (that ’s a farm where the girls go in bob sleighs and hay wagons for chicken and waffle suppers) and we found the three foxes placidly eating milk and honey and biscuits. They had n’t thought we would get that far; they were expecting us to stick in the barn window.

Both sides insist that they won. I think we did, don’t you? Because we caught them before they got back to the campus. Anyway, all nineteen of us settled like locusts over the furniture and clamored for honey. There was n’t enough to go round, but Mrs. Crystal Spring (that ’s our pet name for her; she ’s by rights a Johnson) brought up a jar of strawberry jam and a can of maple syrup—just made last week—and three loaves of brown bread.

We did n’t get back to college till half-past six—half an hour late for dinner—and we went straight in without dressing, and with perfectly unimpaired appetites! Then we all cut evening chapel, the state of our boots being enough of an excuse.

I never told you about examinations. I passed everything with the utmost ease—I know the secret now, and am never going to flunk again. I shan’t be able to graduate with honors though, because of that beastly Latin prose and geometry Freshman year. But I don’t care. Wot’s the hodds so long as you ’re ’appy? (That ’s a quotation. I ’ve been reading the English classics.)

Speaking of classics, have you ever read “Hamlet”? If you have n’t, do it right off. It ’s perfectly corking. I ’ve been hearing about Shakespeare all my life, but I had no idea he really wrote so well; I always suspected him of going largely on his reputation.

I have a beautiful play that I invented a long time ago when I first learned to read. I put myself to sleep every night by pretending I ’m the person (the most important person) in the book I ’m reading at the moment.

At present I ’m Ophelia—and such a sensible Ophelia! I keep Hamlet amused all the time, and pet him and scold him and make him wrap up his throat when he has a cold. I ’ve entirely cured him of being melancholy. The King and Queen are both dead—an accident at sea; no funeral necessary—so Hamlet and I are ruling in Denmark without any bother. We have the kingdom working beautifully. He takes care of the governing, and I look after the charities. I have just founded some first-class orphan asylums. If you or any of the other Trustees would like to visit them, I shall be pleased to show you through. I think you might find a great many helpful suggestions.

I remain, sir,Yours most graciously,Ophelia,Queen of Denmark.
March 24thmaybe the 25th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

I don’t believe I can be going to Heaven—I am getting such a lot of good things here; it would n’t be fair to get them hereafter, too. Listen to what has happened.

Jerusha Abbott has won the short-story contest (a twenty-five dollar prize) that the Monthly holds every year. And she a Sophomore! The contestants are mostly Seniors. When I saw my name posted, I could n’t quite believe it was true. Maybe I am going to be an author after all. I wish Mrs. Lippett had n’t given me such a silly name—it sounds like an author-ess, does n’t it?

Also I have been chosen for the spring dramatics—“As You Like It” out of doors. I am going to be Celia, own cousin to Rosalind.

And lastly: Julia and Sallie and I are going to New York next Friday to do some spring shopping and stay all night and go to the theater the next day with “Master Jervie.” He invited us. Julia is going to stay at home with her family, but Sallie and I are going to stop at the Martha Washington Hotel. Did you ever hear of anything so exciting? I ’ve never been in a hotel in my life, nor in a theater; except once when the Catholic Church had a festival and invited the orphans, but that was n’t a real play and it does n’t count.

And what do you think we ’re going to see? “Hamlet.” Think of that! We studied it for four weeks in Shakespeare class and I know it by heart.

I am so excited over all these prospects that I can scarcely sleep.

Good-by, Daddy.

This is a very entertaining world.

Yours ever,Judy.

P. S. I ’ve just looked at the calendar. It ’s the 28th.

Another postscript.

I saw a street car conductor to-day with one brown eye and one blue. Would n’t he make a nice villain for a detective story?

April 7th.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Mercy! Is n’t New York big? Worcester is nothing to it. Do you mean to tell me that you actually live in all that confusion? I don’t believe that I shall recover for months from the bewildering effect of two days of it. I can’t begin to tell you all the amazing things I ’ve seen; I suppose you know, though, since you live there yourself.

But are n’t the streets entertaining? And the people? And the shops? I never saw such lovely things as there are in the windows. It makes you want to devote your life to wearing clothes.

Sallie and Julia and I went shopping together Saturday morning. Julia went into the very most gorgeous place I ever saw, white and gold walls and blue carpets and blue silk curtains and gilt chairs. A perfectly beautiful lady with yellow hair and a long black silk trailing gown came to meet us with a welcoming smile. I thought we were paying a social call, and started to shake hands, but it seems we were only buying hats—at least Julia was. She sat down in front of a mirror and tried on a dozen, each lovelier than the last, and bought the two loveliest of all.

I can’t imagine any joy in life greater than sitting down in front of a mirror and buying any hat you choose without having first to consider the price! There ’s no doubt about it, Daddy; New York would rapidly undermine this fine, stoical character which the John Grier Home so patiently built up.

And after we ’d finished our shopping, we met Master Jervie at Sherry’s. I suppose you ’ve been in Sherry’s? Picture that, then picture the dining-room of the John Grier Home with its oilcloth-covered tables, and white crockery that you can’t break, and wooden-handled knives and forks; and fancy the way I felt!

I ate my fish with the wrong fork, but the waiter very kindly gave me another so that nobody noticed.

And after luncheon we went to the theater—it was dazzling, marvelous, unbelievable—I dream about it every night.

Is n’t Shakespeare wonderful?

“Hamlet” is so much better on the stage than when we analyze it in class; I appreciated it before, but now, dear me!

I think, if you don’t mind, that I ’d rather be an actress than a writer. Would n’t you like me to leave college and go into a dramatic school? And then I ’ll send you a box for all my performances, and smile at you across the footlights. Only wear a red rose in your buttonhole, please, so I ’ll surely smile at the right man. It would be an awfully embarrassing mistake if I picked out the wrong one.

We came back Saturday night and had our dinner in the train, at little tables with pink lamps and negro waiters. I never heard of meals being served in trains before, and I inadvertently said so.

“Where on earth were you brought up?” said Julia to me.

“In a village,” said I, meekly to Julia.

“But did n’t you ever travel?” said she to me.

“Not till I came to college, and then it was only a hundred and sixty miles and we did n’t eat,” said I to her.

She ’s getting quite interested in me, because I say such funny things. I try hard not to, but they do pop out when I ’m surprised—and I ’m surprised most of the time. It ’s a dizzying experience, Daddy, to pass eighteen years in the John Grier Home, and then suddenly to be plunged into the WORLD.

But I ’m getting acclimated. I don’t make such awful mistakes as I did; and I don’t feel uncomfortable any more with the other girls. I used to squirm whenever people looked at me. I felt as though they saw right through my sham new clothes to the checked ginghams underneath. But I ’m not letting the ginghams bother me any more. Sufficient unto yesterday is the evil thereof.

I forgot to tell you about our flowers. Master Jervie gave us each a big bunch of violets and lilies-of-the-valley. Was n’t that sweet of him? I never used to care much for men—judging by Trustees—but I ’m changing my mind.

Eleven pages—this is a letter! Have courage. I ’m going to stop.

Yours always,Judy.
April 10th.

Dear Mr. Rich-Man,

Here ’s your check for fifty dollars. Thank you very much, but I do not feel that I can keep it. My allowance is sufficient to afford all of the hats that I need. I am sorry that I wrote all that silly stuff about the millinery shop; it ’s just that I had never seen anything like it before.